1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of printing systems and, in particular, to providing printing architectures and associated methods to implement virtual enclosure bins for post-printing processes.
2. Statement of the Problem
Many companies or organizations use continuous-forms printers or fast cut-sheet printers to print documents to be mailed to individuals. One example is a company that prints credit card bills and mails the credit card bills to customers. These companies often choose to include one or more enclosures with the main document in the same envelope. The enclosures may be promotional pieces, such as marketing fliers for new products or special offers, or may be legal documents, such as a notice of a rate change, an insurance policy rider, etc. The enclosures are frequently offset-printed 4-color pieces that fit into a standard business envelope. The finished size of the enclosures is often about 3½ inches by 8 inches.
The documents are printed from a document print job provided by an application used by the company. Each document in the document print job might enclose none, all, or a subset of the available enclosures for that print job. Customers with different characteristics will often receive a different subset of the available enclosures. For example, only customers who have used their credit card to purchase from a certain type of retailer will receive a certain enclosure.
Companies that mail large volumes of documents, such as a credit card company, typically automate the process of preparing the documents for mailing as follows. First, the company creates a document print job that includes electronic images of all of the documents of a given type for a given period, and then prints the document print job on a high-speed laser printer using either cut-sheet or continuous forms to create stacks of documents that are ready for enveloping. The stacks of documents are then passed to post-printing processes. A feeder mechanism feeds the documents from the printer to an inserter (also called an enveloper). For a particular document, the inserter gathers the pages of the document into a stack. The inserter then folds the document pages in either half or thirds, depending on the size of the outer envelope. The inserter then reads some type of enclosure data from the document, such as an optical mark or a bar code, to identify any enclosures to include with the folded document. The inserter typically has one or more enclosure bins, each of which stores a stack of preprinted enclosures of a certain type. After identifying the proper enclosures for the document, the inserter inserts the folded document and the enclosures into the envelope and seals the envelope which is then ready for mailing.
The enclosure data, such as an optical mark or a barcode, which the company prints on the document controls the above inserting operation. The enclosure data specifies which of the available enclosures in which enclosure bin are to be included with the document. The enclosure data includes a code that specifies the enclosure bin from which the inserter is to feed enclosures for a particular document. Thus, each document is bundled with the proper enclosures.
One problem with present enclosure processes is that most if not all inserters have a limited number of enclosure bins. If the number of different enclosures that the company wants to include with a particular document print job exceeds the number of available enclosure bins on their machines, then the document print job has to be divided into different print jobs. Each of the print jobs would include only documents that call for the same or similar enclosures. When one of the print jobs has finished, new enclosures need to be loaded into the enclosure bins, which is referred to in the art as a new “load plan”. Unfortunately, an impossible number of load plans might be required for all actual subsets of enclosures. For example, for a print job containing 200,000 documents, if there were 30 different enclosures called for by the documents in aggregate and the inserter had 10 enclosure bins, then as many as 50 different set-ups might realistically be required to insert every enclosure. Each load plan would have a different subset of 10 of the 30 enclosures. It may not be feasible to support this many load plans, so the company might have to eliminate many optional enclosures (those not required by business rules or regulations) in order to reduce the number of load plans to a reasonable number.
Having many load plans, each of which requires a separate print job and a set-up of the inserter, introduces complexity into the printing and inserting operations and reduces the possible utilization of expensive printers and inserters resulting in higher equipment and labor costs. Having many load plans may also eliminate the possibility of electronically sorting the mail pieces by ZIP code to obtain postal discounts. The number of documents for a particular load plan may not be sufficient in each ZIP code to obtain the discount. Thus, the company would have to physically sort the envelopes on an envelope sorter machine, which is time consuming and expensive.
Present enclosure processes use preprinted enclosures. This requires printing the enclosures in large quantities in advance of printing of the document print job, and then stocking the preprinted enclosures. This requires significant lead-time and results in large inventory expense for the enclosures and waste material when the company changes enclosures. Because of the lead-time required for printing and stocking preprinted enclosures, the company's marketing department cannot quickly respond to changing market conditions.
Further, due to the cost and complexity of stocking, handling, and inserting many different enclosures, it is typically not feasible to have desired variations of the enclosures. For example, it is typically not feasible to have Spanish language versions of enclosures, even though the document might be in Spanish. Typically, the company prints the enclosures well in advance, often using an external offset print supplier. There is no practical way to correlate individual enclosures to documents. Therefore, it is not feasible to personalize the enclosures, such as with a customer's account number and name.
One solution to the above problems is to use a color printer to print the documents and to also print the enclosures in-line with the documents. However, there are a number of problems with this approach. First, there would have to be extensive modifications to the application that generates the document print job or would require creating a post-printing program that adds the enclosures to the document print job. Secondly, the document would be printed in color even though black/white printing is satisfactory. This will increase per-page printing costs significantly and may require that the company upgrade most or all of its printers to color even though only a fraction of the printed pages require color. Third, if the company wants to print the enclosures on separate sheets of paper, then each enclosure sheet would need to be the size of the main document. This would waste a great deal of paper and may greatly increase postage costs by pushing many documents into the next higher postage rate category due to the much greater paper weight for the enclosures. Lastly, documents are typically printed on heavier bond paper, such as 24# bond, whereas companies often print enclosures on much lighter paper, such as 15# or 16# bond. The heavier paper for the enclosures is a waste and may be more expensive to mail.
It is desirable to use a more effective method of including enclosures with a document than is presently available.